


Setting Fire to Time

by ScotlandEvander



Series: Over the Rainbow [26]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Gen, Longing, Regrets, Staring, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-18
Updated: 2013-07-18
Packaged: 2017-12-20 13:10:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/887663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScotlandEvander/pseuds/ScotlandEvander
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Okay. Regulus did have a heart and it ached. If he could, he’d turn back the hands of time and never let himself slip up. Never let her know the Dark Lord’s interest in her. He’d refuse to join the Dark Lord if he could turn back time enough. He’d take death before he’d allow the Dark Lord to mark him. He’d not allow his mother to push him around, tell him what to do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Setting Fire to Time

**Disclaimer: If you know it, I do not own it. If it doesn’t make sense, hopefully it will later.**

* * *

This was what his life was reduced to: staring. 

She ignored him at every turn. Refused to meet his eye. Refused to acknowledge that he was a living, breathing human being. 

Hate. She told him she hated him. 

Then she behaved as if he did not exist. 

As far as he knew, he was in fact invisible. No one spoke to him any more. All that was left was for him to observe, watch. 

Hopefully that would gather enough information for the Dark Lord. 

It wouldn’t be enough. 

Nothing was ever good enough for Dark Lord Smurf. 

The thought stabbed him in the gut. He’d say it’d stab him in the heart, but he was pretty sure she’d stolen that. 

* * *

The eyes were on her again. It was the same every day. The cesious colored eyes burned holes through the space between the table till they set fire to her head. 

She failed to feel it. 

Steven Moffat, Muggleborn extraordinaire, could not figure out for the life of him how she lived with those eyes constantly attempting to set her on fire. 

“It’s just there are these fixed points in time. Big events that have to happen no matter what,” Atlanta Black was saying while not bothering to notice the fact Regulus Black was setting her hair ablaze. 

It would go up in smoke, poof! Instantly, as hair was highly flammable. Steven had set fire to his hair on accident a few times since entering the magical world. 

“Time is actually sentient in a sense. It knows what these fixed points are and it will stop at nothing to keep them happening. All the little events are changeable,” Atlanta went on, flipping pages in a notebook she carried with everywhere that was this intense blue color. “What you wear, what you eat for dinner, who you talk to, how you manage to discover the fact your DADA professor is harboring the soul of Voldemort in the back of his head, the exact manner in which you save the planet while you try to figure out which bow tie to wear to the debate you plan on having with the alien invaders…”

Steven quirked an eyebrow. He jotted down her last sentence in his own notebook. That might work for something. Since entering the magical world, he could not figure out for the life of him why there weren’t more fiction books written. The whole place was littered with plot bunnies just waiting to leap into something more. 

Inspiration at every turn. 

“But, the fixed points…you can’t change those damn fixed points. They’ll happen no matter what.” 

Atlanta let out a huff, her pen clattering to the table and allowed her head to fall into her hand. Her bottom lip stuck out as she stared into space. She absently stirred her now cold tea with her index finger. 

“What is a fixed point?” Steven asked. “The concept of fixing a point in time seems sort of strange.”

“Fixed meaning it MUST happen at all costs and Time— this bat crazy lady in a box—  will make sure it happens,” Atlanta offered, her eyes drifting towards the Slytherin table. This meant they rolled clear to the side, as her back was to the table she wanted to look at. If she had eyes in the back of her head, she’d be able to stare at Regulus as intensely as he stared at her. 

She always sat with her back to him. 

More than likely because of his staring. Or she did not want to temp herself. 

“Statues are creepy,” Steven announced.

Atlanta’s eyes snapped to him. “What? That is random, even for you, Moffat.”

“But they are. Don’t you think they sometimes move? Like when you blink and they move a wee bit?”

Atlanta picked her head up out of her hand and sat up straight. “Where did you even come up with that idea? Next thing you’re going to tell me silence controls us without us realizing it.”

“Silence?”

“Listen to the sound of silence,” Atlanta said in a rather creepy sounding voice. “I was talking about time. Time. Time is a demented lady in a box. You see, Tom and I found this book.”

“Who is this Tom you’re always talking about?” Steven asked. “I’ve never met a single person here named Tom. Which is odd. Tom is a rather common name.”

Atlanta closed her eyes for a moment, looking almost pained. She reopened her eyes and yanked a book out of her back. Steven read the title.

“ _Time Traveling Souls_? Can your soul travel through time? Can magic do that?”

“Yes,” Atlanta said. “Per this guy. Most people write him off and a loon, but I think he knows what he’s talking about. Well, other than Time is a sentient being who travels around in a box. That make no sense. His theory on time travel explains a lot, though.”

“Really? Do you know a lot about time travel?”

“I make a point to know about crazy things, you know that, Stevie. I’m an inter-dimensional traveler. If I had a box, I’d think I was Time.”

She laughed after she said this. She always laughed when Steven tried to get her to talk about some of the more bizarre things she spoke of. She knew a little too much for not being a Seer (not that Steven believed in those things). When he had first begun talking to her last year, he had entertained the idea she was really from the future. While she knew a lot about Muggles, she failed to really know a lot about the current Muggle culture. She knew vague current events (better than most magical people Steven had met). Yet, it was Muggle technology that really gave her away. 

She got frustrated with what was available. 

One time she announced she wanted a computer. Another time she wished Regulus had a pager. She’d written to Steven over the summer after he’d lamented about missing a television program he’d wanted to see, he ought to tape it if he knew he was going to be gone. 

Then, her recent obsession with time travel. It had started after Christmas break. Suddenly, she was always carrying on about time travel. Yesterday, it’d been time was changeable, always changing and there were a million different parallel universes. Today, there were fixed points in time and a mad lady in a box. 

“Time moves in a linear line,” she was saying, not realizing Steven hadn’t been listening. “So, when you travel into the past, you erase the future you once knew. Time, though, is happening at the same time at all points. Hence why we can travel back in time, yet it’s very hard and takes a great deal of magic to pull yourself into the future. And if want to send someone to the future, you have to do some complicated math to be able to arrive at a point where Time will let you.”

“So, you can’t show up right when you left?”

“No. You’ll never be able to do that. You will either be a day late or more,” Atlanta reported, flipping the page in the book. “And easiest way to travel to the future is to have someone in the future pull you. Like snatch you.”

“Really?”

She nodded. “According to this guy. Hans Tempidio. He created a whole new theory on time travel and was totally brushed off.”

“Why?”

“The fact he believes Time is sentient and knows what it’s doing. Even if she lives in a box. Time is stubborn and she knows how things have to play out. Time gets board, though, so she allows people to travel through time. Time only cares about the overall storyline, though, so small things it doesn’t give two juggernauts about.”

“Juggernauts?”

Atlanta went on without noticing Steven’s question. She was too busy scribbling in the notebook again. “The fixed points are like main plot points. Only, it’s almost impossible to determine what Time considers a fixed point or main plot point. Like—”

Atlanta suddenly stopped talking and looked up, meeting Steven’s eye. She blinked several time and turned around sharply, her hair whipping around and hitting Xeno Lovegood in the face. 

* * *

She was looking at him. After weeks of no one seeing him, no one noticing him, she was looking right at him. Her jade eyes were glowing slightly and locked on to his own eyes. 

He froze, unable to move. Being under her full gaze, with her expression as fierce as it was, was all most too much to handle. She was beautiful, unusual, and no longer his. 

Okay. He did have a heart and it ached. If he could, he’d turn back the hands of time and never let himself slip up. Never let her know the Dark Lord’s interest in her. He’d refuse to join the Dark Lord if he could turn back time enough. He’d take death before he’d allow the Dark Lord to mark him. He’d not allow his mother to push him around, tell him what to do. 

Staring straight into her eyes, he felt lost for a moment. 

She turned around before he could analyze it further. 

He felt like he was drowning.  

* * *

Xeno looked surprised and stared around, swatting the air for whatever invisible bug he was dealing with today. Steven held in a chuckle. 

“Time can be rewritten,” Atlanta said, turning back to face Steven. “You can rewrite an essay, but in the end you still need all the important parts, yeah?”

“Of course. If you took out the main parts, you’d have no point.”

“Time can be rewritten,” Atlanta repeated. “She was right. Of course, she’s me in a sense and I’ve always believed that. I’m an idiot who thinks you can go back in time and mess around, change things for the better. I don’t agree that you cannot mess with time and bad things happen to wizards who do. Time can be rewritten, as long as you keep the main plot points!”

Think Face appeared and Atlanta fell silent. Steven finished off his cereal and began to pack up to head off to his first class. 

“Lanta! Lanta!” he called waving his hand in her face. She hadn’t moved for almost ten minutes. “ATLANTA BLACK!”

She startled, looking up at him. Her grey-green eyes were glowing, either from excitement or whatever magic she was using. Steven was never sure why her eyes would glow. It had been creepy when he first noticed, but he was used to it now. 

“You have to work around the fixed points. That’s all. It’s like doing a rewrite. Like if you rewrite a novel.”

“You said that already.”

“I know. Oh, crap. Class. Later, Stevie.”

Atlanta dashed off, her leather bag dragging on the floor behind her. Steven rolled his eyes and walked out of the Great Hall. Ambling along, he caught sight of Regulus Black. He had his hands in the pockets of his robes and books tucked under his arm. He watched Atlanta sprint off up the stairs heading off to class, her poor bag being abused behind her. Sighing, Regulus turned and headed into the dungeons, dragging his feet like Atlanta was dragging her bag. Steven hitched his book bag on his shoulder, wound his scarf around his neck a few times and headed outside for Care of Magical Creatures, his head teeming with ideas. 

It was tragic that wizards didn’t value entertainment like Muggles did. If wizards had something like television, Steven would know exactly what he’d be doing with his life after Hogwarts. Tragically, wizards were behind in that area. No one focused on the creative arts in this world. 

And as a Muggleborn, he’d likely be scorned if he tried to get a job within the wizarding world in it’s current state. Also, with this whole Voldemort issue, he might just be safer out of this world than in it. 


End file.
